Melissa and The Road Not Taken

I wish Melissa hadn't died before we could discuss the true meaning of Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken, but now I’ll leave it up to Robert.

It was often stressful to have a relationship with Melissa. This has been the case for a while. In the last few years, Stacie and I have been fighting mental illness in our home. This has caused us to draw a boundary with those who may contribute to undue stress for either of us. 

Despite all this, Melissa inspired me. She was my Ivy League sister. And though I struggled to read even in high school, I applied to Penn (twice!) in part because she believed I could. She told me to go for it. And even though she thought that the program I was applying to at an Ivy League university was pretty weak-sauce in terms of academia [insert chuckle here], she cheered me on either way. In college I thought I would be more attractive to girls if I wore the Harvard hat she gave me. Maybe academic superiority is a myth, but she made the myth believable and I admittedly bought into her mythology. 

Melissa chose to leave the LDS Church a while ago and her silent presence in my head has contributed to the questions that I have in a positive way even though the "Stalwart but Stubborn" Mormons may not understand this. Currently I’m in a place spiritually where I’m more content but with many questions and desiring to find people who aren’t afraid to ask. Melissa was one of those people. And though her questioning took her outside of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she inspired me in my search for truth, despite the risk of uncertainty. There are a lot of things I don’t know for sure right now. But what I want to believe is that Melissa's spirit is happy. Like Dumbledore told Harry Potter after he had been killed by Voldemort and was in the quasi-heavenly King’s Crossing: “Do not pity the dead Harry. Pity the living. And above all those who live without love.” I really want to believe this.  

It’s hard not to regret having spent more time or given more love to a loved one who goes unexpectedly and before “their time". And I honestly regret not having spent more time investing in a relationship with the better angels of her nature. I love studying the greats like she did and I will never sit down to study them again without the hope that she might be there sitting with me, suggesting a richer [insert better word than richer] choice of vocabulary and encouraging further discovery.  

In this life, Melissa and I just happened to find ourselves in the same blended family. I would like to believe we find ourselves in specific orbits for a reason. Why were we placed in each others’ orbits in this life? A few reasons come to mind. 

We both had been divorced and our conversations about marriage after my divorce were a bit stark and hopeless, though they somehow brought us closer together. For a little while I lost my faith in marriage (and in females in general), but I regained my faith in marriage (and females) and this picture of her at my wedding to Stacie made me believe that she saw a glimmer of hope for the possibility of love after a traumatic and emotionally complex divorce.

Melissa watching Stacie and I dance our "first dance" at our reception

And even though the stake president who married Stacie and I said during our non-temple ceremony that we were "worthy to be sealed in the temple", every time we were asked “what temple were you married in?” I felt like Melissa understood how we felt and I was glad that she was at our non-temple wedding ceremony (which was truly beautiful). 

Another reason. Almost exactly two years ago, I was all alone after Stacie had been hospitalized for a traumatic episode of delusion and psychosis. I was still in shock and afraid that after I had regained my faith in marriage and love, what I hoped for had been taken from me. I felt alone and vulnerable. Melissa just happened to show up at my apartment in Pleasant Grove that first night. She just came for a quick hello, and we ended up talking for four hours until, as we tried to say goodbye next to her car, we talked for another hour and we were both freezing in the September night air.

We spoke of mental illness and religion, of faith and of belief. We spoke of luck VS providence. We spoke of determinism VS agency. She argued for determinism and I for agency. She argued using logic and philosophy. I argued using social psychology and love. In the end, we respectfully disagreed. But we were both able to put down our cultural weapons and glimpse into each others’ world for just a moment. In my moment of stark vulnerability, she gave me a glimpse of a world without Providence. A world where religion and faith might just be a grand delusion and where science should be pursued and philosophy worshipped. And in a moment where she felt valued and heard, I showed her a world where, regardless of God’s existence, people choose to be good. And where, despite the hopeless tragedies of our lives, loaves and fishes actually do miraculously multiply beyond reason and logic. She saw me and I saw her. We both stood in a bit of awe as we shared a sacred moment of respect for each other, though our chosen paths were different. 

Melissa’s argument has surreptitiously [at last a word with which Melissa would feel comfortable] haunted me ever since. I still don’t have an answer for the fact that our brains can synthesize a “heavenly" vision that is in fact, not real, as Stacie experienced firsthand.

I want to believe in a benevolent heaven, beyond this existence. A spirit world where clarity abounds and agency is respected forever and ever.

And I hope my argument of love, goodness and agency will haunt Melissa in that spirit world where she can still choose her eternal destiny. 

If that world does exist and I could have the wish of my heart today, it would be that the spirit of Robert Frost himself would at some point sit down with Melissa (like George MacDonald did with C.S. Lewis) and tell her that The Road Not Taken was not a treatise on determinism as she once told me, but that she is now in a heaven that still allows her to choose. And that even if the decision to go down one road was impulsive, a benevolent heaven can use that imperfect choice to turn you into something better than you were before, if you desire it.

I hoped that one day I would have had the chance to have this conversation with Melissa when we both were in a better chapter of life, but that day will not come in this life. And still I am glad we were placed in the same orbit for a little while. 

Decisions in the Context of Eternity

I recently read this in an talk by Elder Maxwell. I am always amazed by his depth.

"Suppose, for instance, that we imagine a 'being' moving onto our earth whose entire life-span is only 1/100 of a second. Ten thousand 'years' for him, generation after generation, would be only one second of our time. Suppose this imaginary being comes up to a quiet pond in the forest where you are seated. You have just tossed in a rock and are watching the ripples. A leaf is fluttering from the sky and a bird is swooping over the water. He would find everything absolutely motionless. Looking at you, he would say: 'In all recorded history nothing has changed. My father and his father before him have seen that everything is absolutely still. This creature called man has never had a heartbeat and has never breathed. The water is standing in stationary waves as if someone had thrown a rock into it; it seems frozen. A leaf is suspended in the air, and a bird has stopped right over the middle of the pond. There is no movement. Gravity is suspended.' The concept of time in this imaginary being, so different from ours, would give him an entirely different perspective of what we call reality.

"On the other hand, picture another imaginary creature for whom one 'second' of his time is 10,000 years of our time. What would the pond be like to him? By the time he sat down beside it, taking 15,000 of our years to do so, the pond would have vanished. Individual human beings would be invisible, since our entire life-span would be only 1/100 of one of his 'seconds.' The surface of the earth would be undulating as mountains are built up and worn down. The forest would persist but a few minutes and then disappear. His concept of 'reality' would be much different than our own.

"That's the most clever way I have seen time and intimations of eternity dealt with. It is very important that we not assume the perspective of mortality in making the decisions that bear on eternity! We need the perspectives of the gospel to make decisions in the context of eternity. We need to understand we cannot do the Lord's work in the world's way."

Trailing Clouds of Glory

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:  

The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,   

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness,  

And not in utter nakedness,  

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home:  

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

-William Wordsworth

I have always wanted to post more about my longing for my true home. I love anything that intimates at the fact that there is more. I used to love transformers when I was a kid and I often joke with myself saying that the real reason I loved them so much was the fact that the transformers' theme was "more than meets the eye."

There is so much more than meets the eye. And there is so much that we just don't remember in the day to day.

There are some amazing quotes that attempt to describe the feeling of "something more."

Here are some of my favorites:

C.S. Lewis' attempt:

A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, then; is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same. (Mere Christianity from the chapter entitled "Hope")

Neal A. Maxwell's attempt:

Some of us have been momentarily wrenched by the sound of a train whistle spilling into the night air, and we have been inexplicably subdued by the mix of feelings that this evokes. Or perhaps we have been beckoned by a lighted cottage across a snow-covered meadow at dusk. Or we have heard the warm and drawing laughter of children at a nearby playground. Or we have been tugged at by the strains of congregational singing from a nearby church. Or we have encountered a particular fragrance which has awakened memories deep within us of things which once were. In such moments, we have felt a deep yearning, as if we were temporarily outside of something to which we actually belonged and of which we so much wanted again to be a part. 

There are spiritual equivalents of these moments. Such seem to occur most often when time touches eternity. In these moments we feel a longing closeness--but we are still separate. The partition which produces this paradox is something we call the veil--a partition the presence of which requires our patience. We define the veil as the border between mortality and eternity; it is also a film of forgetting which covers the memories of earlier experiences. This forgetfulness will be lifted one day, and on that day we will see forever--rather than "through a glass, darkly" (1 Corinthians 13:12). 

There are poignant and frequent reminders of the veil, adding to our sense of being close but still outside. In our deepest prayers, when the agency of man encounters the omniscience of God, we sometimes sense, if only momentarily, how very provincial our petitions are; we perceive that there are more good answers than we have good questions; and we realize that we have been taught more than we can tell, for the language used is not that which the tongue can transmit.

Truman G. Madsen's attempt:

No amount of mortal abuse can quench the divine spark. If you only knew who you are and what you did and how you earned the privileges of mortality, and not just mortality but of this time, this place, this dispensation, and the associates that have been meant to cross and intertwine with your lives; if you knew now the vision you had then of what this trial, this probation of mortality could produce, would produce; if you knew the latent infinite power that is locked up and hidden for your own good now - if you knew these things you would never again yield to any of the putdowns that are a dime a dozen in our culture today.

My Attempt:
I just want to share some of my more personal examples of that closeness that I have experienced:

• Music - Harmonizing: hitting a complex chord with a group of singers that just resonates within your soul. Hearing the Muslim call to prayer sung across an entire city. The amazing sound that comes from a symphony or even a single cello. 

• Aha Moments - when learning, there are times when you experience an amazing connection. Joseph Smith described this when he spoke of certain revelations saying it was like having "pure intelligence flow into you."

• Conversations with forever friends - sometimes God allows us to glimpse eternity through another person. Whether it be something they say that strikes a deep chord of truth within you or just being in their presence and connecting with what C.S. Lewis calls the "central self," there are moments when you are with another person and you just know that you knew each other for longer than just your lifetime. 

• Macro Nature - riding your bike through a misty mountain trail or skiing in fresh powder and hearing the "whoosh! whoosh!" as you fly down the slope, seeing a mammoth wave, catching a glimpse of a huge lightning storm, listening to and watching an avalanche or a volcanic eruption; stopping on the side of the freeway in the middle of a desert and turning off the lights and looking up to see the Hale Bopp Comet's tail reach halfway across the sky; sitting and wondering about the majesty and incomprehensible enormity of the universe. Climbing to the top of Mt. Sinai or Mt. Timpanogos to watch the sunrise.

• Micro Nature - discovering a rotifer for the first time under a microscope; learning about cells, molecules and atoms and forces at work inside of my own body. Realizing how amazing it is that my body has the ability to fix itself and witnessing it first hand after shattering my collar bone. Opening up an orange and looking at how absolutely perfect each packet/capsule of orange juice is. Pondering the miracle of photosynthesis.

Broccoli

• Creativity - When a song just pops into my head or a set of lyrics that seemed to have come "out of nowhere" into my mind; winging it in almost anything; freestyle looping alone in my room on a looping device and wondering at the end "where did that come from?"

• Babies - staring into their eyes and just looking at them in your arms or letting them sleep on your chest in complete trust. A warm little bundle of heaven with perfect miniature lips, fingernails, earlobes and toes.

• Death - though it is often painful to see the mortal existence of a loved one come to an end; it has always caused me to look beyond to what else is out there. I love what Neal Maxwell says about death - that it is not a period, nor is it an exclamation point, but only a mere comma. 

• Pursuit of learning and truth - this is related to the above aha moment, but I wanted to mention the pursuit of learning and truth because I have had some amazing experiences in many of my college courses where I am encounter truths that ring of eternity. In chemistry, biology, physics, anatomy, philosophy, cognition and psychology and in nearly all my classes, there are nuggets of truth that are highlighted that have taken me to a higher plane where I know there is something more. I love this quote from Einstein that expresses his pursuit of what he does not yet know: “The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man." 
  -Einstein

Einstein playing the violin

So many other things that I have experienced in addition to the ones above just blow my mind and cause me to wonder where I am from and what I really am doing here. When talking about this, there will always be more to say because there are things we just don't know how to express with words. That longing for something more will always exist inside of me and I believe that it exists inside of everyone. I believe it is a part of what I like to call our spiritual DNA.

Peace Be Unto You - שָׁלוֹם

2011 - the best of times

2011 was quite the year. There were a lot of things that may allow me to say "what a horrible year" or "why did I mess up so bad this year?" or "I want to blot 2011 out of my memory forever." However, I don't think this is the best way to look at it. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. But it is better to look up. With that said, here are some of the good highlights from 2011. 

It was a Great year with The Advocates

Through all the craziness of this year, The A Cappella group (The Advocates) has been a constant blessing to my life. The challenge, the music, the amazing and extremely talented friends who have been there for me in really hard times, and the great opportunities. And we made another talent-exchange with Vocal Point. We lost a good one (Jake Tengelsen) and got a good one (Keith Evans):

6th in a national video contest:

My buddy Kendel and I created this video for a contest for the Ruth Institute. It was fun to make and we ended up getting some free stuff out of it. Good experience.

I learned about looping

I got one of these babies and hung out with a guy that has a solo show in Vegas with looping (Mister Tim is his stage name). I was able to perform at the Velour, at the University of Utah and a couple ward talent shows. More to come this year. 

Ran the SoCal Ragnar

200 mile relay with 11 other people. We ran more like 225 because we got lost. It was an adventure. Start on the beach and end on the beach. This was Ragnar #2 for me and I liked this one much better than the Vegas course.

Launched www.TheReturnedMissionary.com

Launched a website to go along with the manual that I will be finishing this year: Live My Gospel. Mainly it has been an informational static website that has served to collect data for the book. Good progress. Have collected some great data with the pilot study and will launch the real study this month to finish the job and get some great information for the book that will come out in 2012. 

Got a Job in SEO

After leaving Qualtrics, I found a job at a great SEO company called OrangeSoda. I like to joke with people that I deliver carbonated soda to retail locations when they ask me what I do. ha. What I really do now is what I have wanted to learn for a while: Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I finally landed the position I want there and am happily learning very marketable skills.  Thank you Google for providing me with a great job.

Book of Mormon: Edition 1

I went to D.C. in May and among other things, I went into the antiquities and special collections area of the Library of Congress and was able to hold and flip through a first edition copy of the Book of Mormon. I have a love of the history of book making as seen in a past post and I have a love for the Book of Mormon, so it was a nice combo.

Lived with my nonagenarian grandmother!

She is amazing and I always learn so much from her. You would never guess she was in her 90s when you see her making 3 meals a day from scratch, going to all the family events, heading up clubs, taking care of the elderly in her ward, doing full day shifts at the temple once a week, writing a book of her own personal history, and teaching primary kids. She even has an iPad2 and an active facebook account! I loved my time at her home. 

Started an LLC and co-created an iPhone app

Met the Future President of Mali

Okay so maybe saying that he is the future president is a little optimistic, but he is the frontrunner candidate and I sure hope he gets it. Yeah Samake is such a good man and it was amazing to meet him in person. He is so humble and is hungry to help the people of Mali rise to a higher level. I put it on here because it really impacted me to meet and talk with him about his plans to change the country. I believe people like him are raised up to become great leaders and this world needs more of those. He can do so much good. 

Mexican Cruise

Saved up. Blew a tire on the way. Went to Disneyland while there. Got drenched by one of the largest natural blowholes in the world at Ensenada. Spoke Spanish to some people in the open air market. There were a couple hickups along the way, but it made the list. 

I will not refer to the worst times of 2011. Why not remember the good that happened and move forward? It is better to look up. It is better to smile. I learned from mistakes. Some very painful ones. But like C.S. Lewis said in his book he wrote when his wife left him alone on earth: "pain is God's megaphone to a deaf world." I guess I was losing my hearing for a bit there. But there were some amazing times this year. Experiences that seemed to recompense that which may have been lost. I will think on these days and stay grateful for God's hand in my life, to bless me more than I can realize while in the moments of pain. 

"What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals" (Goethe)

The becoming is a continuous project. But there is no "end-check-mark" that will appear with some mondo achievement or list of achievements. The process is the project. And no matter what I checked off my list for 2011, I know that I have become a better person. Mostly, I think I have been able to experience the reality of the power of the atonement, and learn first hand of the depth of love I know exists in the Savior. He is real. He is SO real. I don't deserve what He gave me. But He did it anyway.  

You're an Entrepreneur and you just don't know it.

I really like this:

I am proud to say that I am an entrepreneur.

I am inspired by what Steve Jobs said:

"Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact - and that is - everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again."

Just start now. Don't wait until you think you have all your ducks in a row. Just do it. When you do, people just pop up to help you, and in my opinion, so does God.

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back-- Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now."

-Goethe

Don't waste food! There are starving kids in Africa - or just donate $10

You often hear "Don't waste your food, there are starving kids in Africa!" That is definitely true and after going to Tucano's or Chuckarama or on a cruise, you realize how much food gets wasted everyday. It is nuts. Sometimes it makes me a little ashamed to be an American, or at least a part of a culture where this is mainstream. I have sometimes wanted to try to start some great thing to help starving people in Africa. One of my best friends has gone there and done some awesome things with foundations like Mothers Without Borders. And my little sister is going to Africa this summer to do humanitarian work as well!

I think all these things are great. And I think that as many as can go, should go and help in every way they can. I also think that leadership and good government can change a people and a country. There is a man named Yeah Samake who is running for president of Mali, the second most poverty-stricken country in Africa. He is an amazing man. I met him last night. He is a member of the church that I am a member of, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I believe that the change that came from his leadership would have a more powerful effect to help starving people in Africa than would donating to little causes or going over there and building a school in a village (not that these are bad). But they are more like giving a fish than teaching how to fish. Mayor Samake needs money for his campaign and I'm asking anyone who is reading this to go to www.yeahsamake2012.com and donate $5 or $10 or $20. Watch his video at the bottom of this post. It is impressive. He is a humble man who would do so much good as the president of this poor country.



I don't have many followers on my blog, but I know people read it. There were over 3,000 unique views last year and over 400 last month. So if every person who read this donated to Mayor Samake, that would be a good start. And if you told your friends, that would be even better. It is a great thing to do. Do it! Go to this website to donate: www.yeahsamake2012.com

Here is a neat video of his story: